Errinundra's Anime

A runaway mechanised juggernaut blunders across a desert. When it arrives at a village it unleashes an arsenal of special effects, including high-explosive fireworks, streamers, mechanical brass bands and spinning, clockwork ballerinas that whistle like falling bombs. It brings not celebration, but dismay to the villagers. Even the remnants it leaves buried in the sand are lethal.

Thematically this is Otomo's. Over time I'm getting a better grasp on his obsession with mindless, relentless violence. He highlights both how brutal it is by the awful, albeit spectacular, effect it has on its victims and how stupid it is, generally by presenting it via elaborate gags. You can also throw in breathtaking animation and intricate artwork. The catch is I find I'm more likely to be entertained than convinced. There's a negativity in his worldview that undermines the inspiration in his visual sensibility.

The characters are Fukushima's. They are quite different from Otomo's usual fare, avoiding his usual sour portrayals, but displaying their own weird grotesqueness, accentuated by the gutteral, indecipherable speech. There's something both appealingly childlike and slightly repellant about the human characters. I like those sorts of internal contradictions. The juggenaut itself is a fantastical creation that uses the film's title as a plot device in a thoroughly Monty Pythonesque way.